Successful Blog

How I Take the Focus Off Money Part II

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A Guest Post by Scott P. Dailey

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This is part two of a two-part series on how to get the client focused on the relationship, not the costs they incur working with you. In the first installment, I discussed how we can calm the fearful and financially strained Mom & Pop by offering them guarantees. Promising struggling small business owners that you’ll share the risk is one of the best ways to demonstrate your investment in doing the job right, not just collecting some quick cash. In part two below, I turn our attentions toward specifically how we can discuss money so that money is no longer discussed. Sounds like a riddle, but I assure you it’s not. So let’s get started.

I understand that the guarantee is among the best ways to return the risk the customer takes in hiring you and I love the idea of shouldering the burden of proof. But that is only one reason I make guarantees. The other is that I want to help. I really do and nothing says so louder than making promises that remove financial risks and potential losses from the bargaining table. See, I’m not preoccupied with the money part of the sales progression and it’s made all the difference. Yes, I need money too, but I only want it from people who were happy with the way I earned it. Everything else feels like stealing. I want to be paid because we agree that I nailed the thing. The fees I’m asking are the reward I’ve earned for adding value to your business endeavors. If my earnings aren’t my reward for doing great work, well then again it just ends up feeling like I got away with something.

The relationship is the reward.

When a customer asks me, ‘Scott, what do you think?’ or ‘Scott, which direction should we head?’ I get pumped. I mean I get crazy excited. Now we’re building something before we’ve even begun building the thing you want built. We’re building that relationship baby! Killer! When you put things in my hands, you’re telling me that you want me to prove it now, earn your trust, your confidence and oh yeah, that’s the reward!

Allay their fears.

If your clients are anything like mine, they’re asking for your expertise because they don’t possess it themselves. Ever been frightened by something you did not understand? OK then. That’s how your prospects often feel: scared. They’re afraid you’re going to trick them, cheat them, screw them. My pitches are often attended by prospects concerned about wasting money on me and I’m equally concerned that I won’t form the beginnings of a trusting bond if we keep discussing money. Consequently, when this happens I attack the topic by promising to give them back their money if they’re unhappy with the results I’ve produce. Simple right? It works almost every time too. Worried about spending your money on me? Super! I’ll give it back if you’re not happy with how I earned it. Next topic. And off we go.
Defuse with candor.

When the elephant in the room is money, seize the opportunity to demonstrate with meaning how confident you are that your customer made a smart decision choosing you. Don’t allow the customer to dangle their cost fears in front of you as if your fees are a stumbling block they’re justified in bring up. Assuming your fees are sensible to begin with, they’re not a just cause to kill the deal at all. Take back control of the room by offering an out that relieves them of the very risk they’re making such a contentious talking point. Assume the risk and you can return your collective attention to what really matters, getting that relationship a’ budding. Oh yeah! That’s the stuff!

How do you help your nervous clients work with you to grow the relationship? How do you relax them when they liken you to a drill-wielding dentist hovering over them like an opportunistic vulture?

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This is the second in a two-part series.

Scott P. Dailey is a Web designer, copywriter and network administrator. Recently Scott launched ( http://scottpdailey.com ), his social media blog that makes connections between social networking etiquette and the prevailing human social habits that drive on and offline business engagement patterns. You can connect with Scott via Twitter at @scottpdailey.

Creative Commons License photo credit: dryhead

Thanks, Scott!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

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How Will You Find Out Whether Your Community Is Bored, Broken, or Inspired to Take on the World?

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(Updated in 2020)

10-POINT PLAN: Assessing and Setting a Benchmark

Finding Out Before You Start

Ever asked someone to change something she’s been doing for years? It’s not the easiest endeavor. Even when we hate what we’re doing it’s become comfortable to us. For some people in some circumstances, it might even be part of our identity. Change is heady stuff.

No matter the value of the reward. It comes with the thought, “maybe the situation I’m leaving is somehow better. I wonder …”

One way to overcome the psychology of change is to measure.

Measurement proves to the people involved that the change is providing the progress that was promised, even when the progress only feels like work.

But before we can measure progress, we have know where we are when we start.

How to Benchmark Who’s Bored, Who’s Broken and Who’s Inspired to Take on the World

It’s an art and a science to gather the people who help our businesses thrive into a true community.

A community isn’t built or befriended. It’s connected by offering and accepting.
Community is affinity, identity, and kinship that make room for ideas, thoughts, and solutions.
Wherever a community gathers, we aspire and inspire each other intentionally . . . And our words shine with authenticity.

How do we know whether any of this is truly happening? How do might we benchmark our community connections before we start moving forward?

Evaluating Individual Relationships

A few years ago, Gallup came up with the q12, a 12 question survey to measure employee engagement. Though they were intended for employees, they work well for any person, any barn raiser involved in creating a working community — employee, manager, vendor, partner, customer, friend of the business. Here they are:

  1. Do you know what is expected of you at work?
  2. Do you have the materials and equipment you need to do your work right?
  3. At work, do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day?
  4. In the last seven days, have you received recognition or praise for doing good work?
  5. Does your supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about you as a person?
  6. Is there someone at work who encourages your development?
  7. At work, do your opinions seem to count?
  8. Does the mission/purpose of your company make you feel your job is important?
  9. Are your associates (fellow employees) committed to doing quality work?
  10. Do you have a best friend at work?
  11. In the last six months, has someone at work talked to you about your progress?
  12. In the last year, have you had opportunities at work to learn and grow?

In the Q12 test it becomes easier to see which points of performance are being frustrated by resources and which are being frustrated by personnel issues.

Evaluating Social Relationships and Networks

When the q12 is paired with a simple informal social test called a sociogram, we can lay out an important picture. A sociogram points out channels of influence, communication, and interaction. Simple questions such as

  • Which person would you ask to teach you something new?
  • Which person would you ask to attend or a gathering of your friends?
  • Which person would you want to offer you a recommendation on the quality of your work?

Those choice that receive many choices are stars. Those who receive none are isolates. Groups who mutually choose each other have formed cliques.

Whether we’re working with few freelancers, a team, or a corporation having firm idea of where we stand before we move forward is ideal. If we find someone from outside the system — someone who looks something like me, easy to talk with and sure to keep thing confidential, we can learn by using these two two sets of questions how people feel about the community that is forming. We’ll draw an idea of how bored, broken or inspired the community might be.We’ll be well on our way to pick out the champions who can pick up the tools and begin building new things with us.

They will raise a barn, not work away as they build our coliseum.

What are you doing to find out whether your community is bored, broken, or inspired to take on the world?

Related
To follow the entire series: Liz Strauss’ Inside-Out Thinking to Building a Solid Business, see the Successful Series Page.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Why B-2-B Is B-2-C … And Social Media is Biz Dev!

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What Do Business Customers Want?

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I sneaked into publishing through the back door, first I freelanced. Then I worked for a contractor who built products for bigger publishers. It was definitely a b-2-b business. I was all about serving my customers. I was also clueless about how to do it.

I thought my customers were the clients who paid me.

It wasn’t until I became a publisher hiring other contractors that I realized how off my thinking had been. I’d been looking a short-sighted wrong direction.

Why B-2-B Is B-2-C … And Social Media is Biz Dev!

The business to business model (B-2-B) isn’t that hard to understand if you think a few seconds about it. What do business people want most? They want to grow their businesses. They want to know what successful people in their jobs at other businesses are doing to be successful. We can bring that to them in two simple ways:

  1. We can use social media tools to connect them to other people who do what they do. Social media tools are fabulous for starting and building deep networking relationships. Great social media strategists are fluent at making those relationships happen.
  2. We can use social media tools to build occasions online and offline where they can learn about companies like theirs who are growing. Webinars, seminars, teleconferences about business development, integrated marketing, reaching out to customers in new and more relational ways can be key to helping our clients’ business thrive and grow.

What I didn’t get then is that if we stop with thinking of our client as our customer we leave them to do all of thinking about how their customer might respond to what we suggest, offer, and recommend. But if we look through our customers to the people they serve we become their partner in business development.
We grow our own business by aligning our goals to help them grow theirs.

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Do you know how to serve your customers’ customers? Do you think B-2-B and B-2-C at the same time and turn social media marketing into business development?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

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How I Take the Focus Off Money

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A Guest Post by Scott P. Dailey

photo credit: RambergMediaImages

My portfolio is comprised largely of passionate, cash-hungry small shops, boutiques, niches and nonprofits. I do work with big companies now and again too, but they’re the exception to the rule and thus, I won’t be spending time talking about them in this post. No, this post is for the small consultancy that’s servicing the small, proud brick and mortar.

OK, so here it is: I guarantee my work. If I’m designing your Web site layout for instance, I take a 50% deposit that sits in escrow until you approve the layout and the balance you cough up once you’re 100% satisfied with the finished result. With Web design, my contracts call for me to create at least two unique layouts, put them both under your nose and get your approval of one of the two. I even offer you several complimentary rounds of change before requesting your approval. If you don’t approve, you get your money back. If you want to abandon the project before providing approval, you get your money back. I guarantee you’re going to love your new layout and if you don’t, I give back your money. If I’m writing copy for you, I refund your deposit if you don’t like my copy. And if your unhappy with the content of your first monthly SEO/social media report or feel I have fallen short on a promise, I refund your money – period.

My customers are very careful how they spend money on their business. Not so oddly, those deep in the black are even thriftier than those sucking wind. In the red or the black, my customers get sticker shock easily. I know this. So, where I may not always be willing to remove the stunned disbelief from their faces with a crazy discount, I do try to allay their spending remorse by making simple guarantees that protect their investment in me.

I don’t want your money that badly.

If you don’t think I’ve earned it, then I refund it. The relationship is the ultimate prize, not you paying this month’s electric bill.

How do you shift the client’s focus from money to forging a bond with you? How do you prove your customers won’t regret hiring you?

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This is the first in a two-part series.

Scott P. Dailey is a Web designer, copywriter and network administrator. Recently Scott launched ( http://scottpdailey.com ), his social media blog that makes connections between social networking etiquette and the prevailing human social habits that drive on and offline business engagement patterns. You can connect with Scott via Twitter at @scottpdailey.

Creative Commons License photo credit: RambergMediaImages

Thanks, Scott!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Successful-Blog is a proud affiliate of

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Be Visible but not Annoying

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by Patty Azzarello

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Invisible doesn’t work

Good work does not stand on its own.

But if you are annoying in the way you pursue visibility, you are also not doing your career any favors.

Visibility is not selfish

Visibility is not just about you. Your visibility is good for your team and your business. People with visibility get more done. Get over thinking you are on the high ground by refusing to pander to politics, because you believe good work should speak for itself. Maybe it should, but it doesn’t.

If you remain uncomfortable with visibility, you remain invisible. So even though you keep delivering great work consistently, you will be disappointed by the lack of recognition, appreciation and rewards you receive.

Get more done

And you’ll also have a harder time getting resources and support for what you are trying to do. No one is comfortable giving great projects and big budgets to people they don’t know.

Visibility = progress for your business and your career.

1. Visibility for Real Results

Annoying: Go for publicity without results to back it up.

I am never advocating visibility INSTEAD of results. It’s always about great work and results FIRST.

You never want to be seen as managing your career more than you are doing work. (We all know and wish bad things for those people.) You don’t ever want to be viewed political with no substance.

Valuable: Be seen as doing and delivering high impact work.

The being seen part is as important as the high impact work. As long as you base the visibility on actual work that delivers value, there is nothing hollow or shallow about it.

2. Visibility with Executives

Annoying: Stalking Executives

Don’t talk to an executive when he has to go to the bathroom. I have seen people keep executives outside the door to the bathroom, and refuse to let them in. How much are they really going to listen to you at that point?

Don’t corner them at parties to pitch your agenda or complain about your issues. They are at a party. Don’t drag them down, they get enough of that when they are not at a party.

Don’t Blame them for things, with no proposals for improvement – Don’t bleed all over an executive about how everything is screwed up in their business, and think your analysis will make you look smart. If you have a complaint, have a proposal. Otherwise you are just annoying.

Valuable: Have a good reason to connect with an executive.

Pay attention to what they care about. Give them positive feedback or valuable inputs to solve issues or expose opportunities. Share a personal point of interest. Don’t start with an ask.

Have them know you as a person, not just a climber. Update them briefly when your work matters to THEM. And be careful that your work actually matters to them before you go on about it.

3. Visibility at Important Meetings

Annoying: Don’t go to meetings just to be seen.

The important people at the meeting notice if you have no function or reason for being there, and subtract points from you career. It backfires.

Valuable: Do high value work. Tune your job to deliver more value over time. Be the reason for an important meeting to happen around your work. Find ways to make that work visible in other ways.

4. Visibility based on truth.


Annoying: Never take credit for work you didn’t do.

You may get a blip of visibility, but it will backfire because it is not real. You get no real benefit from promoting yourself on any false foundation. Ultimately people will see right through it.

Valuable: Make other people famous.

Give credit to other people for good work that they did. The great thing about this is that you still get the visibility for doing the communicating. When you give the credit where it is due, based on the truth of who did the high value work, you get recognized for cultivating stars.

How have you seen people get this really right or wrong?

Let’s hear your best stories — the good, the bad, and the ugly in the comment box below!

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Patty Azzarello works with executives where leadership and business challenges meet. She has held leadership roles in General Management, Marketing, Software Product Development and Sales, and has been successful in running large and small businesses. She writes at Patty Azzarello’s Business Leadership Blog. You’ll find her on Twitter as @PattyAzzarello

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Quality Or Quantity – Which Ranks Higher On Your Blog?

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By Terez Howard

You’re probably staring at your computer, thinking what is this girl talking about?  Of course, quality is more important than quantity.

I agree that a high quality post, one that is well-written, well-researched, extraordinarily helpful with a dash of entertainment, is more important than pumping out one garbage, cut and paste post after another.  Every blogger strives to share tidbits of knowledge with her readers, so people make it to the last period of the last sentence in a post.

That said, I think there’s something to be said about quantity.  How often have you come across a superb blog post and you’re dying to read the latest and greatest post only to find the author’s most recent work is from April?  Sigh.

If you really like a blogger’s work, you go to the About page and business website to find some reason why this excellent blog became defunct.  That’s what I do, hoping there is some hidden link to another, updated blog.

Did you ever think the blogger does not consider her blog to be dead?  Maybe she’s thinking that she will return to it when she finds the time.  Maybe she’s procrastinating over her writing skills.  Maybe she plans on hiring out, but hasn’t found the best person for the job.  Maybe she hasn’t realized how much time has elapsed since her latest and greatest.

Quality posts versus quantity

Let’s take a look at these two points and see which one tips the scale.  Please feel free to add to my small list.

If you focus on a high quality blog, you

  • Stand out as an authority in your niche.
  • Feel more focused as a writer, rather than meandering from pillar to post.
  • Are likely to gain a dedicated following because readers expect valuable information.

When you stress quantity, you

  • Will have a wealth of information on your blog quickly.
  • Are likely to gain a dedicated following because readers can tune in often.
  • Get some Google love.

Both have their strong points.  But what do you want more?

Which ranks higher, quality or quantity?

My answer is that both should walk hand in hand.  One cannot and should not function without the other.  When I write, I bring quality to the table by being as resourceful as I can be.  I don’t do as much as others.  My posts aren’t flooded links, tables and video.  (I’m not saying these things are bad; they just aren’t what I do… yet).  My point is: I do my best.

As far as quantity goes, I have a set writing schedule that I can keep up with as a busy stay-at-home mom.  I’m not writing every single day.  That’s impossible for my life.  Once again, I do my best.

Quality and quantity have their places in a blog.  You have to strike a balance that keeps you regularly writing high quality posts.

How do you strike that balance?

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Terez Howard operates TheWriteBloggers, a professional blogging service which builds clients’ authority status and net visibility.  She has written informative pieces for newspapers, online magazines and blogs, both big and small.  She regularly blogs at Freelance Writing Mamas . You’ll find her on Twitter @thewriteblogger

Thanks, Terez!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!